As China's ruling Communist Party celebrates its auspicious anniversary, the talk is intensifying over the way to affect the renewed prominence of authoritarian values at the guts of the world's second largest economy.
For the Communist Party , this is often meant to be a flash for basking within the warm adulation of the masses, not for talk about a replacement conflict .
And Max Baucus, the previous US Democratic Party Senator who served as US ambassador to China from 2014 to 2017, finds himself in agreement.
"The vast bulk of individuals in China… care little or no a few change within the party because they're more concerned about their own lives," he says.
"Living standards in China have risen dramatically within the last 20 years and they are very happy that ."
What to do, if anything, about the Communist Party's tightening grip on power, the growing personality cult of its leader Xi Jinping, and therefore the draconian direction of its domestic policies is one among the defining international policy debates of our time.
And while it divides opinion in Washington and Europe - between those asserting ideological confrontation and people , like Mr Baucus, for continued strategic engagement - such differences could be much harder to glean inside China.
Cai Xia may be a retired professor from Beijing's elite Central Party School, who spent her life working with and training senior officials until her growing doubts and criticisms forced her into effective exile last year.
She doesn't buy the thought that the Chinese people don't need political change, nor the notion that engagement with the Communist Party is best than the choice .
"It's not too late to vary China from an autocratic system to a democratic system," she says.
"The earlier the higher , for China and therefore the whole world. albeit Xi Jinping involves a 'shared future for all mankind', he has already launched the conflict and it never stops."
Deng Yuwen is that the former editor of an influential Communist Party newspaper, the Study Times, another insider who is additionally now living in exile, unable to return to China for fear of arrest following his own published criticisms of the system.
He has some sympathy for the view that China's rapidly changing economy might once have held out the prospect of political reform.
"Ten years ago, the party was gradually fading into the background," he says.
"That's what Xi Jinping wasn't satisfied with, he considered it dangerous; so now using his own words - 'from North, South, East, West and centre' - the Party is comprehensively controlling the country."
Mr Deng believes that under this renewed dominance of the party, China has taken an excellent leap backwards.
It has become increasingly oppressive reception - with its giant re-education camps in Xinjiang and therefore the mass arrests in Hong Kong - also as increasingly able to assert its authoritarian values on the worldwide stage.
"Now China is powerful, it's doing business with the planet , so other countries got to be mindful of China's emotions and its practices," he says.
"This will gradually exert an influence on those countries. By accepting China's system and its logic, the West may gradually change, this might be a danger for the West."
Prof Cai goes even further, arguing that this is often now a deliberate a part of the strategy; if the forces of globalisation have did not reform the Communist Party , it's only too able to use those self same forces to actively foist its values on the West.
"China has been preventing peaceful evolution, during which Western values might enter China and affect the Chinese public, and preventing it by all methods," she says.
"While at an equivalent time, China is using the Western world's freedom of speech and freedom of the press to export its information, illusions and propaganda to other countries."
As if by way of illustration, the BBC contacted quite a dozen academics at variety of Chinese universities, including Prof Cai's old party school, within the hope of chatting with them about the party, its place in Chinese society and therefore the significance of the anniversary.
So tight are the controls on information within China, especially around important occasions like this one, that none of them were available or willing to talk .
The ministry of foreign affairs didn't answer several requests to assist source an appropriate expert on party matters, despite having offered to help .
Performers participate during a show commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China at the National Stadium in Beijing, China, on 28 June 2021
image captionCentenary events were planned meticulously
Given its ripe adulthood and its central role in Chinese history, those that still support the thought of engagement with the Chinese Communist Party believe that you simply can't simply wish it out of existence.
"I believe we should always still advocate for our Western liberal values," former ambassador Baucus says. "They're better, no doubt about it.
"Having said that, China has grown during a different way and they are getting to still grow during a different way… and if we will not influence them towards a more democratic sort of government, we've to simply accept that and affect it."
When I ask about Xinjiang and Hong Kong , he tells me that, while the party is decided to not relinquish political control, he believes there are limits.
"They calibrate their control, pretty much . That is, if they're too controlling, too repressive, the people tend to react against it. On the opposite hand, they will be repressive up to some extent ."
But Prof Cai, who knows the party from the within out, argues that there are now, actually , few internal limits on its power and it's time for a special model, one that's much more cautious about engagement and trade as ends in their title .
"I hope the Western politicians and therefore the world will see China's situation and take action. This authoritarian system - any authoritarian system - won't last forever. it'll change at some point and that we should really help that to progress."
Does she have any positive words for the party she spent numerous years working for on the occasion of its 100th birthday?
"In China, 100 years old also means an individual has lived long and it's time to consider death," she says.
"If I even have to mention anything positive, I hope that on this anniversary, the Communist Party reviews the intense mistakes of its politics which have made the Chinese people suffer and pay such an enormous price. It should do redemption, not celebration."
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